COVID-19 and China's 'Marriage Cliff'... 7.63 Million Couples Married Last Year, the Lowest in 35 Years

Divorce Rate Decreases by 42.7% Compared to One Year Ago

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyunjung] Last year, due to COVID-19 related quarantine measures and other factors, a marriage cliff phenomenon appeared in China. After a decade-long decline in the number of marriages, it reached the lowest level since 1986.

On the 21st, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, citing the announcement from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, that 7.36 million couples got married last year, marking the lowest level in 35 years.

In China, the number of marriages peaked in 2013 with 13.469 million couples, but has been declining since then. According to analysis, the number of marriages per 1,000 people in China was 5.41 last year, nearly half of the 9.88 recorded in 2013.

By region, marriage rates were low in Shanghai, Zhejiang Province, Fujian Province, Hebei Province, and Hunan Province, while Tibet, Qinghai, Guizhou, Anhui, and Ningxia had higher rates. Demographer He Yafu analyzed that there is a change in perspectives on marriage and child-rearing among young women in China.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

In a survey conducted by the Communist Youth League last October targeting unmarried urban residents aged 18 to 26, 43.9% of female respondents said they either had no intention to marry or were uncertain about whether they would marry. This rate was 19.3 percentage points higher than that of male respondents. Many women expressed concerns over domestic violence, unequal household responsibilities, and discrimination against working mothers in recent years.

The country's gender imbalance has also been evaluated as a contributing factor to the decline in marriages. Since the introduction of the one-child policy in the 1980s, the birth ratio of boys has been higher than that of girls. According to the Youth League, among the approximately 210 million Generation Z population (born between 1995 and 2010), there are 1,827 more males than females.

Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a long-time critic of China's birth restrictions, pointed to COVID-19 related constraints as another cause. He stated that without the pandemic, the number of marriages last year would have been 7.97 million, 340,000 more than the registered number. In 2020, he estimated there would have been 8.64 million marriages, 510,000 more than recorded.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.